


A Phone Unanswered

by Ithela



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Car Accidents, Depression, Dubious Consent, Evil Mary Morstan, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infidelity, M/M, Murder-Suicide, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 13:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18223913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithela/pseuds/Ithela
Summary: There are just some universes where true love was never meant to be.But in every single one, there is at least a connection, two twin souls crashing together and falling apart.





	A Phone Unanswered

**Author's Note:**

> Just some ideas. Sorry for typos, beware of the warnings. Nothing graphic but mentions and scenes of it

There are just some universes where true love was never meant to be. 

•*•*•

The warehouse is the same as it was three years ago.

For John, the 1195 days feels more like a lifetime.

He looks at his past from the point of view of an observer, a historian examining what was happened and ended and can never be changed again. The events of his pathetic excuse of an existence are less painful and poignant this way. They become shadows, mere fragments of who he was strewn against the wall behind him.

He’s wearing a red sweater today, an odd change from the usual monochromatic grey shades of the average doctor. The wool material is a blood red and itchy against his skin. Every once in a while he pulls against the collar, swallows awkwardly, but he refuses to remove it because the red of the sweater is a color he knows well. And it’s morbid, tragic, stupid and pathetic, but he wears it because his is the last color he ever saw Sherlock in.

No matter what he drinks or finds in alleys, no matter what he steals from stores in the hospital, he closes his eyes and he can see Sherlock’s corpse on the ground. He can feel the splatters of blood that lingered on his clothes when he shook the cadaver of his greatest friend and found it empty and wanting.

“He’s my friend.” John had yelled brokenly, chest shaking, vision blurry, hands trembling the cold sack of flesh held between them. And his arms had trembled as he shoved through the crowd of onlookers. His voice hoarse as he said, “Move let me through, I’m a doctor. I’m a doctor.” But all his learning and and all his training, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

John Watson was as useless as he always was when it mattered most. He was no great mind, no great person, not even a decent enough friend to notice the signs of someone whose life begged saving. He watched helpless as Sherlock Holmes killed the greatest man John ever knew.

And hadn’t John Watson had been warned?

Hadn’t Sally Donovan once said, in that derisive tone she only reserved for the things too complex for her simple mind, that one day Sherlock Holmes would be the one responsible for the body on the ground. She had looked John in the eye, and laughed but never once had she said it would be Sherlock’s own.

And now three years later, John Watson returns to the beginning and he stands on a ledge and he remembers.

Sherlock had fallen.

As easy as the leaves give way to wind of fall, like the waves of a hurricane, like the weathering of stone to the roaring sea, like everything that rusts and the gold that fades.

He crashed and splattered but before he became an insignificant composition of carbon atoms to be recycled by the earth, Sherlock Holmes had said “This call, it’s my note. That’s what people do isn’t it? Leave notes.”

And John knew, pretended he didn’t but he did because once he had left a note behind and wanted no one to save his life. But he had lived and his life was all the more brighter for it, all because of Sherlock.

“Sherlock. Sherlock, please.”

It wasn’t enough and them—

Then there was falling, screaming, blood on the ground, in the water, in the air. Things fell apart, mere anarchy set upon the world.

John was too far away to see the body collide with the ground. His joints aching and straining enough by the time he arrived to uselessly ask, “he’s not moving why isn’t he moving?”

And then he’d pled, “move, I’m a doctor, he’s my friend, my friend.” But what kind of friend was he if he couldn’t do this one thing right. If he was left here crying, ‘please no, please please pleasepleasepleasenononosherlocksherlocknotsherlocknotsherlocknotagain

pleaseIneedyoudon’tleavedon’tleavedon’tbedeadhecan’tbedeadwhyishedead I’m a doctor he’s my friend

Whyishedeaditshouldhavebeenme.’

It should have been John. Why hadn’t it been John? Why? Because Sherlock Holmes was marvelous, amazing on his own but John Watson by himself was useless, worthless, stupid.

He was the man who wandered aimlessly with no purpose or goal. He was the man with a stack of cards and a single loaded gun that hadn’t been fired in over a year. He was a man of hideous knit sweaters and empty prospects and waking up seven days a week in seven different beds.

John Watson returns to the beginning because for a year he tried but trying failed.

With shaky hands, he glances out the window of a warehouse and remembers three years before. He remembers a man he had barely met and the cocky way he gambled his life.

It was a Sherlock he did not know and could not mourn. It was a Sherlock he would never see again.

With shaky hands he raises the gun.

His phone rings, a clear cry in the silence of despair.

John Watson smiles. They know. But by the time they think of the beginning, by the time they realize he did not mean the end, it will be too late.

In a warehouse in London, a gun shot rings in the early morning silence.

A cadaver falls to the ground, and blood spills forth, blending into the wool knit sweater of the man.

He is smiling.

Somewhere, in an office in England, a phone rings and rings and rings.

 

•*•^•^••

 

John Watson knows he should call his sister. It is a recurring thought in his mind. He knows he could just as easily do it tomorrow but the call of the gun in his drawer is too much and the ache in his shoulder subsides to the ache in his heart.

Their parents are dead, their cousins are inconsequential, and in the entirety of England the Watson’s have only themselves. Regardless of their differences, despite Harry’s alcoholism, they are family and family does not forget itself.

John Watson is home from a war he was sure would kill him and nearly did. The wound in his shoulder throbs painfully like he is sure Harry’s heart would ache if he had come home to be buried and aches ever since Clara left her. She is fresh out of a divorce that has killed her emotionally, and the pain is different but it is pain all the same. Perhaps they could each benefit from the other, like they had once before, in the days of forts under covers and games in the fields. John remembers the days of their childhood, of their closeness and ability to tell each other everything. Back when they’d hid from their father’s rages together even when Mummy screamed.

They have their distance, but family is family and again, it does not forget itself.

In 2010, John Watson is asked where he would like to be dropped off. He looks at the map of England and his heart yearns for London but his mind says no, and demands they travel up north to meet his sister.

He does not stroll down a park and say hi to Mike Stamford.

He does not meet Sherlock Holmes at a laboratory in St. Bart’s. He does not witness a drug bust or the ravings of a mad violinist. He does not chase after a man through the streets of London as if he hung the stars or sit across from him and laugh in little Italian bistros.

The tragedy is this, the material does not matter, the physical is inconsequential, and truthfully John Watson would always be able to love Sherlock Holmes regardless of financial circumstance or legal declarations of insanity. But in this world, Robin and Batman walk down two different paths.

John Watson will live a long and boring life of poorly disguised alcoholism, mounting malpractice suits, and three failed marriages before passing in his sleep to the happiness of five wayward and greedy children.

Every once in a while he will read a newspaper article about the brilliant findings of New Scotland Yard’s resident freak and he will laugh along with all the simple minded people in the world. He will nod along to the declarations of insanity and future murderhood just as often as there are days when he gazes at the photo of the errant detective and for whatever reason he will be tempted to call him and ask him all the questions in the world.

But he doesn’t.

Eventually the world turns without him, and John Watson sighs at the apparent lies and suicide of the man. Clucks his tongue at the crazy things people do for fame.

And he may have a brief smile when Sherlock Holmes is resurrected, a short sigh of relief.

But really he cares little for a man he never met and he ignores the tugs on his red string of fate.

Neither of them knows of what could have been. Neither of them realizes that they both attend Mike Stamford’s wedding and in a drunken haze their eyes collide as if by magic or fate or destiny. Because they will look away, they will shake their heads, and John Watson will blandly kiss his wife and Sherlock Holmes will passionately kiss a woman named Irene. They will drown in their complacency and fake excitement until the day they die.

And on that day, as if by fate or luck or chance, their last resting place is side by side, two gravestones twenty years apart, together in death if in nothing else.

 

•*•*•*•*•

 

John Watson is all of eighteen years of age when he meets Sherlock Holmes. He is nineteen when he realizes there story is not one of love but of hatred and bitterness.

John Watson is a broken boy, the product of an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, looking for something real and substantial no adult in his life could give him. He doesn’t mean to fall in love, and certainly if he could have chosen, he would never have picked Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock is the flighty sort, the kind that tires easily and throws things out rather than keeping them and risking sentimentality. He’s an incredibly selfish utilitarian who prefers to care for his own comfort above anyone else’s and has little qualms about doing so. Loving him is like playing with fire; logically it will hurt, logically it will burn, but emotionally it feels warm and real and the burnt isn’t felt until it’s too late and flesh gives way to charred remains.

Their first encounter is a chemical reaction of epic proportions. It’s an electron knocking the nucleus out of orbit, running into a brick wall and making cement give way. It’s a single spark in the dark, the crack of a bullet in a room of silence.

John is John and Sherlock is Sherlock and the latter confounds the former, and the former loves the latter, and one will inevitably hurt the other because such relationships of devotion fail miserably at being love and can never endure the changing human psyche. They far too shallow on one side, tilted and skewed to favor one, lack the necessary commitment and reciprocation. Sherlock holds all of John’s affections but the same can not be said of a boy with money in the millions and dreams of scientific glory and the simple boy with not a penny to his name. John is kind and sweet and well enough to impress, but what he lacks in the mental department can not be made up for in an overabundance of affection. He is at times exhausting, and nothing that Sherlock could see himself forever with. He is a distraction, a splash of color in a world of grey doomed to burn out and be nothing. Sherlock needs more, desires a platform for greatness but he can not deny the man is unforgettable, perhaps a tad significant. So he lets him stay in the periphery and pretends his heart does not twinge at the sight of blonde hair and warm blue eyes.

John Watson chases after a boy he knows will never be his; he follows him through hallways of learning, dances around bookshelves and tea sets. He examines the cut of Sherlock’s cheekbones, dreams of the blue of his eyes. He waxes poetic about the greatest man he knows though a bit challenged in societal interaction. Poor, worthless John Watson falls in love as best as a boy who was never taught love can. Sherlock fixes him without even trying. But love is never easy, and Sherlock was never one for keeping things he fixed.

Four years into their relationship, John finds him pressed against the wall by a man named Jim Moriarty.

And he’s 22 without a single clue of love but it hurts because he could have loved Sherlock, almost had. It hurts because he had devoted himself to this one person and not once had he cared enough. He leaves without telling Sherlock what he saw. John comes back when the flat is empty and clears it of all his stuff.

They do not speak for thirty years. John will think of a million things he wants to say and thousands of letters he wants to write. He will kiss Mary Morstan on a terribly boring and cliche summer night, sealing their two lives together for as long as one can tolerate the other, all the while the shadow of Sherlock lingers. John will divorce her after a daughter, marry again for another, marry thrice to a man that dies young and bereft of John Watson’s heart. He will mourn the last the most. The man had dark hair and blue eyes, and he was young, and he was smart, but John could only love him with half a heart; the other still chained to a man he constantly tried to replace.

And then, 52 year old John Watson, GP will knock on the door of a consulting detective’s office and he will weep and ask why. Thirty years later and three daughters but bawling on the steps of a man who broke him, drunk from a funeral of a man he tried so hard to love.

And Sherlock will not care, will slam the door, but he will slide to the floor.

He will sob and regret.

He will remember a failed and abusive marriage that ended in court battles and legal pissing matches for custody of two children Sherlock had never known how to love. He will damn his youth and think of the color yellow, bright against a black, monochromatic world. He will think of a fire that damns him to hell. 

Sherlock opens the door to find John, and never let go.

He runs to the street and Sherlock can see him, can wrap his hands on the coat, but he doesn’t see the car.

John does. And he turns and pushes Sherlock away. Loving him just as he always had.

John Watson dies in a pool of his own blood but for the first time loved by the man he always wanted.

•*•*•*•

He doesn’t know why it took him so long to notice. The mustache was not so obvious, the act pathetic, but he supposes ignorance is better in some cases.

There are things that cannot be forgiven.

Sherlock stands in a nice little restaurant, prim and proper, and alive but John Watson finds he does not want anymore. The love is still there, but the passion, the desire, the dreams of happiness have faded like the man he once was. They died slowly, with every loading of the gun pressed to his head and every drink on lonely nights when he begged for miracles. They died in Mary Morstan’s bed, when John had not wanted to lie there but stood helpless to the touch of a woman who only wanted to love him. Who whispered in his ear that she deserved this, and only her, who said that he was worthless and helpless and could only be loved by her.

John Watson marries Mary Morstan in a lovely ceremony that Sherlock Holmes attends. John will stare out into the people seated in front of him and wish to beg just one for help. But no one will want him and he is too far gone to back out, so he kisses Mary and monotonously thinks that he won’t have much of his life left regardless.

Mary climbs into his bed every night, and he hates it.

John reads every newspaper article printed, hides them from a wife that yells and throws knives with the ease of an assassin just as he hides the bruises from the rare visits by Gregory Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes. No one notices, no one cares, and the only one that might’ve seem his crumbling psyche has hurt him far too much to visit.

When his daughter is a woman almost grown, a little thing with no other family but her father and terrified of her mother, John Watson kisses the bruises on her arms, tells her he loves her, writes a will with explicit instructions, raises a gun and shoots Mary first before throwing himself off the nearest balcony.

He calls Sherlock first, the first time in 21 years. His daughter, 15, is still at school and never sees his sobs when the phone isn’t answered.

“Take care of her, please Sherlock. This is my note,” he says to the voicemail. “It’s what people do.” And he jumps.

In a puddle of blood, a phone will ring and ring.

•*•*•

Stephen Strange supposedly knows the inner workings of this and various universes.

Everett Ross hesitates to speak to the man, finds the thought of another version of him with perhaps a different name or life far too terrifying. Nevertheless he stares at the man with a curious gaze, eyes only minutely surprised when he turns back.

The sorcerer smiles arrogantly at him, lips pulled tight as if he knows everything and they’re stuck like that for an infinite second. A connection is built, and the man looks at him as if he were suddenly everything.

Everett almost says something, almost reaches out to call the man over and get to know him better. But then King T’Challa walks into the room and he remembers he must really speak to Agent Romanoff and Rogers and perhaps Stark too.

He leaves the room, with an aching heart as if it longed for a love that was no longer there.

He does not know Stephen Strange, has never met him, will never see him again, so why does it feel like he’s known him all his life?

Why, when his phone rings and rings, does he answer with an S on his lips and the flash of a long coat, not unlike the red cloak?

•*•*•

They are two men, madly in love and in the midst of a world war. Their love is forbidden, looked down upon, insulted. They will die in the trenches, hands held together, taken as some mockery of loyalty to Queen and Country but really an endless devotion to each other.

Their bodies will become two nameless graves without purpose, heroes lost to time. And the tent they pitched, a reprieve from the world around them, the place where there love was true, will topple.

Because in the end, it wasn’t just that they were two men, it was that one was a nazi and the other was not.

•*•*•

Khan Noonien Singh will commit atrocities. He will attempt to raze planets and peoples, he will tangle with the best of them, and die for nothing.

He will never remember the man he used to be. The man with a mind in the sky and an intelligence to take it there. A man who once loved and loved another, one all blue and yellow.

•*•*•*•

There are some universes where true love does not win.

But in every single one, there is at least a connection, two twin souls crashing and falling apart.

It does not matter if Sherlock Holmes falls but John Watson does not, if things are not perfect but simply ok.

If a man never reaches the step of a London flat, 221B.

If the only Baker they know is the one down the street.

If one marries a Mary and the other a Hooper or Irene.

If one dies in an alley, needle barely plunged.

If one falls to the line of fire, in a desert far from home.

What matters is this:

In one universe a phone will ring and ring and in another the right person will answer.


End file.
